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Two decades ago, the most southern tip of Miami Beach, then known as South Pointe, was desolate, downtrodden and overrun by vagrants and drug addicts. Nobody wanted to live in the neighborhood, much less build or invest there. But in the late 1990s, big-name luxury residential high-rises began to arrive in the area. Just over a decade later, 10 new buildings have been completed in the neighborhood — and four more are slated to finish construction in 2015.

Dora Puig is a broker behind many upscale SoFi properties including this $5.5M townhouse.

Along with all that new real estate, the ’hood also got a hip, new moniker: South of Fifth, or SoFi — denoting the area below Fifth Street in South Beach, a seven-block radius stretching from Biscayne Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. Already on the radar of the international elite, SoFi will extend its cool quotient tomorrow, when deep-pocketed, art-buying jet-setters gather for a swanky Art Basel party hosted by Related Group’s Jorge Perez and Whitewall magazine.

Perez is the developer largely responsible for SoFi’s gilded turnaround — he’s the force behind eight opulent residential buildings, six of which went up over the past 16 years, with two more, Marea and One Ocean, now under construction. It’s at Marea’s elegant showroom that Perez will host tomorrow’s bash — hoping to lure even more buyers to the 30-unit, Yabu Pushelburg-designed condo, where a 3,022-square-foot penthouse recently sold for $7.6 million. The building joins other projects by high-profile architects and designers, including Sieger Suarez (Apogee) and Philippe Starck (Icon South Beach).

This influx of fancy condos means prices have risen accordingly. “South of Fifth has become one of the priciest neighborhoods in Dade County, with luxury residential condominiums on the beach averaging between $2,000 and $3,000 per square foot,” notes Dora Puig, principal broker/owner of PuigWerner Real Estate Services.

Since 2007, Puig has sold some $125 million worth of properties in SoFi — including a nearly 5,000-square-foot unit for $13 million at Continuum, and a penthouse at the bayside Murano Grande for $5.1 million.

With enviable views, the 46-unit One Ocean is already sold out … pre-construction.

“Hang out here and you’ll see Michael Caine walking around in board shorts,” Puig says, piloting her Bentley along lower Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive, where plots for luxe projects Glass and 321 Ocean will join Perez’s new constructions. Puig then points to a clutch of beachfront towers and says, “Pat Riley lives in the penthouse of Apogee.” Looking toward the bay, she adds, “Rony Siekaly [a former center for the Miami Heat] just sold a place for $5 million in Murano Grande” — for which he paid $2.5 million in 2010.

One of Puig’s higher-profile sales was at the 28-unit Ocean House, on Ocean Drive and First Street. That’s where Myles Chefetz, owner of Prime 112, recently sold his penthouse to buyout mogul Marc J. Leder. The 4,176-square-foot pad went for $15 million, though Chefetz spent $5.5 million gut-renovating the property he’d bought for $7.2 million in 2009.

Puig also brokered the sale of executive Wayne Boich’s penthouse at Icon South Beach, a building on the bay side of SoFi, earlier this year for $21 million. He bought it for $7 million, “put a few in” and listed the condo — which has a private movie theater on the roof and a pool — for $19 million.

Yabu Pushelburg is the design firm behind the 30-unit Marea, where one of the penthouses just sold for $7.6M.

While others enjoy profitable resales, for Perez, the end game in SoFi is nigh, with his One Ocean project sold out and Marea 87 percent of the way there. The buildings are set on so-called “dry lots,” meaning they’re not directly on the beach or bay. Also on a dry lot is Glass, a new condo developed by David Martin and designed by Rene Gonzalez. Eight of its 10 units are spoken for — selling at an average of $2,500 per square foot — and the triplex penthouse sold in November after being listed for $26 million.

As for buildings along the beach, the Enrique Norten-designed, 15-unit 321 Ocean nearly sold out pre-construction, with prices starting at $1.5 million for 1,900-square-foot units; it will be the last along the shoreline, simply because there are no beachfront development plots left.

In fact, as Perez sees it, these projects mark the end of development in South of Fifth. “There’s nowhere else to build!” he says. “The only real estate that remains is either too small or it has no view of the water.”

Indeed, the market is so hot that Perez has decided to play hardball on Marea’s last three units. “They’re for sale, but I’m not pushing. We just started moving the earth and I believe that two years from now” — when construction should be completed — “prices will be higher.” Perez is sufficiently bullish that he put aside a Marea penthouse for himself.

As he sees SoFi’s final new construction taking shape, Perez seems a bit wistful. “If you know of somebody with a piece of land or a project for me to develop here, have him give me a call.”